Profits are down by about 37 percent on last year
Translated by Adriana Dancu
Dairy group FrieslandCampina will cut around a thousand jobs in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany in the coming year. The company will try to absorb the job losses as much as possible through retirements, however, forced redundancies have not ruled been out. FrieslandCampina is cutting jobs to reduce costs, reports the Omrop Fryslân.
The company has generated more turnover this year, but is concerned that profits will come under pressure from the ongoing pandemic. Some problems that the company has include declining sales in restaurants around the world, the fall of various currency values, lower dairy prices and the tightened border between China and Hong Kong.
Less profit than last year
Last summer it was announced that the dairy group’s profit in the first half of 2020 was much lower than in the same period last year, with about 37 percent less earned. The profit now amounts to 108 million euros, attributed to the Coronavirus. Consumers may have bought more milk products, but other major European buyers of cheese, butter and milk powder, for example, are failing. This is partly due to earlier closures of the catering industry.
100 million euros less
With the proposed measures FrieslandCampina will cut costs annually by around 100 million euros. With the savings, the company wants to be able to pay a good milk price to the dairy farmers and invest in the growth of the company.
As soon as more is known about the plans, FrieslandCampina will ask the unions for advice and the employees will be informed.
FNV did not see it coming
The reorganisation is an unexpected development for the FNV union. “I had not foreseen this coming,” says FNV director Ron Vos, who is in regular contact with the group’s works council. Vos understands that action must be taken. “Due to the corona crisis, we have not all started to drink less milk. But at FrieslandCampina the money is not earned with cartons of milk. They have to rely more on, for example, baby milk powder and delivery to the catering industry. Things are getting worse now.”
FrieslandCampina is one of the largest operating dairy corporations in the world, formed by dairy farmers in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The company has officially existed since December 2008, after the merge of Friesland Foods and Campina.
Five branches in Fryslân
FrieslandCampina has offices in 36 countries and employs around 24,000 employees. More than a third of them come from the Netherlands, while there are five branches in Fryslân.
There are 11,500 farms affiliated with FrieslandCampina. The number of dairy farmers has fallen by 15 percent in the past five years. In 2015, more than 13,500 dairy farmers gave their milk to the company, and the price they receive for their milk varies between 32 and 40 euros per 100 kilos of milk.
